


Human

by PrincessSelene04



Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, adri was a terrible person, but we already knew that, cinder needs a hug, iko is a good friend, kai is a good fiancee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24463459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessSelene04/pseuds/PrincessSelene04
Summary: In which Kai learns just how terrible Adri was to Cinder.(Technically could be read as a prequel to Wedding of the Era, but I didn't include it in the series)
Relationships: Kai/Linh Cinder
Comments: 24
Kudos: 142





	Human

Cinder took a deep breath of humid air as she stepped out onto the balcony attached to Kai’s suite. The view was exquisite. She could perfectly see the city below, buildings upon buildings cramped together. There was something so beautiful about the chaos of New Beijing.

But it was strange, Cinder thought, that she now lived in the palace on the cliff she used to pass every day. Sometimes she even wondered what was happening inside the walls. Her life before the Lunar Revolution felt like it was decades ago instead of a couple years. She used to be lonely--Peony and Iko as her only friends. But now she had so many friends, so many people who loved and cared for her. The differences between her past and her present were like night and day.

The doors opened behind her and familiar footsteps approached. Seconds later, Kai’s arms wrapped around her waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder, letting out a content sigh. “Welcome back home,” he whispered.

“It feels like home more than it ever did before.” Cinder leaned into his touch, still looking out to the city.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. Cinder learned that it was best not to dwell on the past too much. When she thought too much about her life in Phoenix Tower, she grew sad. There were some good times, sure. Peony and Iko always managed to make her smile. But there were far more bad times. Far too many memories of Adri telling her she was worthless. Far too many times she went to bed hungry. Far too many nights with not enough sleep so she could work for too many hours in her little booth the next day.

“This is the happiest and most comfortable I think I’ve ever been,” she said simply. She didn’t elaborate, and she hoped Kai wouldn’t press for more.

Much to her relief, he didn’t.

Holding each other close, they watched the sun set on the horizon.

* * *

Kai had always known that Cinder was more affected by her time living with Adri than she cared to admit, but now that he’d been living under the same roof with her for a few months, he was beginning to realize just how deep her emotional wounds ran.

Even though they had separate suites she would always stay in his. He loved it. He loved holding her in his arms and running his fingers through her mousey locks as she fell asleep. But every once in a while he would wake up to her missing.

The first time it happened, he panicked. Kai searched the entire suite before he tracked Iko down and asked if she knew where Cinder was. She did, of course. Iko wouldn’t tell him why exactly Cinder was up in the middle of the night, but she did agree to take him to her.

Iko led Kai across the palace to the garage where Cinder was tinkering with a palace android. It broke his heart to see the blank expression in her eyes when she finally lifted her head to look at him.

“Cinder,” he said softly as he walked over. Kneeling down in front of her, he carefully pried the screwdriver from her hands and set it on the bench. “Cinder, darling, let’s go back to bed.”

“I can’t sleep,” she mumbled, looking away from him.

He noticed her eyes settle on something behind him, and he turned around to see what it was. Or rather who.

Iko was still standing there, a sympathetic smile on her face. She nodded as if to reassure Cinder that everything was okay, that Cinder was safe.

Kai turned to look back at his exhausted fiancee. “Will you at least come back upstairs with me? You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to.” He wished she would sleep, but something in the back of his head warned him not to push his luck right now, not to push her too hard.

“Okay,” Cinder whispered.

Kai stood back up, Taking her hands in his, he pulled her off the stool and wrapped an arm around her waist. It took them a while to get back to their room since it was on almost the exact opposite end of the palace, but they made it. Iko followed as well, and Kai invited her in. He hoped that she could bring Cinder whatever comfort he couldn’t.

The three of them laid down on the large bed, Cinder protectively, but comfortably, squished between Kai and Iko.

When Cinder fell asleep just as the sun was beginning to rise, he turned his attention to Iko once again.

“Has she always done this?” he whispered. “Woken up in the middle of the night and wandered?”

Iko nodded. “Ever since the revolution ended.”

“Why?”

Even though she didn’t have lungs, she let out a deep sigh. “Adri made her wake up an hour before dawn so that she could get to the market right as it was opening. Even though she doesn’t have to do that anymore, it still happens every once in a while.”

“She does it a lot?”

“More often than she’ll ever admit. I always try to get her to go back to sleep, but she never has until now.”

Kai’s frown deepened as he looked down at the wonderful woman between them. How had he not noticed this before? All their vid calls when he asked if she was okay and getting enough sleep because she looked so tired…

“Has it been getting better?”

Iko nodded. “It has. First few months on Luna it happened a few times a week, now it’s usually only once every few months.”

“So you don’t think I should be worried?”

“Not unless it starts happening more than that.”

Kai pushed a strand of hair off Cinder’s forehead and stroked her cheek with his thumb. He would trust that Iko was right. Iko knew Cinder longer than anyone else and she knew Cinder’s limits. “Okay,” he said.

* * *

The next thing Kai noticed was that Cinder had a hard time accepting compliments that she didn’t feel she earned. Every time he would tell her she looked beautiful or pretty or even nice, she would brush him off. That or she would get uncomfortable, like she wasn’t used to someone saying nice things about her.

What he found more alarming than her inability to take a compliment based on her physical appearance was that she couldn’t take a compliment based on her personality or actions either.

Any time he said something about how kind or caring or courageous or intelligent she was, Cinder would wave him off. It was like she didn’t believe that she was those things. Worse, she didn’t believe there was even a possibility she  _ could ever _ be those things.

When he said she did an amazing job holding her ground on something she believed the Eastern Commonwealth and the world desperately after a meeting with world leaders, she would say that it was nothing.

On a day they had time to relax and not worry about any government duties, he decided to ask her about it.

“Cinder?” He said from where he sat lounging on one side of the couch.

Her eyes were closed, head resting on the cushions. “Hm?”

“Why don’t you like it when I compliment you?” he asked.

Cinder lifted her head and opened her eyes, staring at him. Long moments dragged on. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before shutting it for another minute more.

Kai patiently waited for her to speak.

“I don’t know,” she admitted after a while. “It’s not that I don’t think it’s nice of you to say. It’s just…”

“Just?”

“I guess I’m not used to it.”

“Iko compliments you all the time.”

“Yeah, but Iko is Iko. As human as she acts, she’ll never be fully human. And neither will I. It’s easier to take a compliment from someone who really, truly  _ gets _ me.” Her eyes widened and she quickly amended, “Not to say that you don’t get me--”

Kai cut her off with a reassuring smile. “Cinder, I know. I didn’t take any offense.”

“Oh… Okay. Good.”

He reached out, taking both of her hands in his own. One of his fingers brushed over the engagement ring on her titanium hand. He loved how the metal of her hand and the metal of the band sparkled together. “Cinder,” Kai said, “you  _ are  _ human though. No matter what anyone tells you.”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “Technically I’m lunar.”

“Which is still human.”

“And a cyborg.”

“Still human,” he insisted.

Cinder met his eyes and he realized there was something hidden there, something dark that was eating her up inside. He wondered how long it’d been there.

Before he could ask more about what happened to make her averse to compliments, his portscreen pinged with an urgent comm from Torin.

* * *

Kai also began to realize that Cinder was terrified to ask for help with something even when she was desperate for it. There were times when he caught her scouring for information on legislation that he knew by heart. And every once in a while she would wander into a part of the palace that wasn’t on her blueprints. When that happened she’d just wander around until she found a place that was.

This time Kai didn’t ask her about it. He didn’t ask her why she didn’t like to ask for help. Instead one night when Cinder was tinkering in the garage, he sought Iko out and asked, “Why doesn’t Cinder ever ask for help?”

Iko looked up at him from where she was painting her synthetic fingernails. She wore a pained expression. “Because she wasn’t allowed to.”

His brow furrowed as he took a seat on the couch next to her. “She wasn’t allowed to ask for help?”

“No.” She shook her head. Twisting the cap onto the bottle of shimmery navy nail polish, she set it down on the coffee table in front of her. “When we lived with Adri, she’d get… punished if she asked for the smallest things or necessary things. It wasn’t explicitly expressed that they were punishments, but that’s what they were.”

“Things like what exactly?” He was afraid to know the answer, but he asked anyway.

“Her metal limbs for starters. The prosthetics she had before the titanium ones Dr. Erland gave her were years old. They were built for an eleven year old. Sure they were meant to extend and grow with her a little bit, but not as much as she needed.”

“So she asked for new ones.”

“Not even new ones, she asked for second hand ones when she was about 14. Adri said that if she wanted ‘new robot parts’ she’d have to make money and pay for them herself. So that’s what Cinder did. But once Adri realized she was making money, she had it all put into her account. Cinder couldn’t use it to buy what she needed.”

Kai’s heart ached to hear that. “What else did Adri do?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you more. Cinder doesn’t really like to talk about it…”

“Please Iko,” he begged.

She hesitated for a moment before continuing. “There were times when she’d lock Cinder in her room for a day or two because there was someone important over or because she didn’t want to look at her or because she thought Cinder asked for something irrational. She usually didn’t bring her food those days either. Peony or I would have to sneak it to her in the middle of the night.”

Kai swallowed the lump in his throat. How could someone be so cruel to a person? He knew Levana was evil, but he never imagined someone who wasn’t in a position of power could do such horrid things.

The few times he’d met Adri, he could tell she was a terrible person. The way she looked at Cinder and talked to Cinder never failed to make his blood boil. But he didn’t understand the true extent of how awful she was until now.

“Cinder didn’t have a real bed either,” Iko said quietly. “She just had a mattress on the floor with a thin sheet and a single pillow. And sometimes Adri would lock her out of the apartment if she was downstairs in the garage too late.”

“Where would she sleep?” Kai asked.

“Usually hunched over her workbench in the basement.”

Kai wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw up or if he wanted to find Adri and strangle her to death. He was not by any means a violent man--with the exception of the one time he tried to stab Levana with scissors--but hearing all this was pushing him into a mentality he never thought he’d reach again.

He ran a hand through his hair, tugging it lightly as he tried to think.

“Is there anything I can do to help her?” he whispered.

Iko put a hand on his knee. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Tell her you love her enough and she just might start to believe it.”

* * *

Cinder squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples with her pointer fingers, doing her best to will away her headache. It was one of those headaches that reminded her she’d be crying if she had tear ducts. Those were the headaches she hated the most. They reminded her that she wasn’t whole. That she wasn’t human.

She wasn’t even sure why she felt like crying.

Her day had been fine. It was full of ambassador duties, and preparations for the wedding, and a few other miscellaneous things, but it wasn’t a bad day. It was just busy. And she was tired. She wanted to take a nap, but she didn’t have the time. There was another meeting she had to get to in 20 minutes.

There was a knock on the bathroom door and she startled.

“Cinder?” Kai called.

She forced her hands away from her temples. Taking a deep breath to calm herself down, Cinder stood up and walked over to open the door. She put on a neutral expression, hoping Kai wouldn’t see how tired and stressed she was.

But of course he saw through her the second he saw her face. His expression went from hopeful to concerned right away.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Kai asked. He took her hands in his own, pulling her out to the seating area in his--might as well be their--suite.

“Nothing’s wrong,” She lied.

“Iko said you hung up in the middle of a call with Bromstad and ran off. That doesn’t seem like nothing’s wrong to me.”

Cinder pulled her hands out of his. She opted to trace the scar tissue around her wrist where skin met metal.. “I’m just a little stressed, it’s nothing you have to worry about.”

“I know I don’t have to worry about you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes.”

“Kai,” she sighed. “Really, I’m okay.”

She wasn’t and they both knew that, but she hoped that he would let it go. She didn’t want to bother him with her problems. He was just as busy as she was, if not more so. He didn’t have the time to run a country and make sure that she was constantly okay. She could take care of herself, she always had and she always would.

Cinder tried giving him a smile, but it fell flat.

He purposely reached out to take her hands again. “Why don’t we cancel that meeting you have soon and spend some time together?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea--”

“Then ask Iko to do it. It’s about the wedding, not diplomacy.”

That would make her feel a little better… “Okay,” she agreed. “Let me just send a comm to her quick.”

“She’s already on her way there.”

Cinder raised an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged. “When she said you dipped, I asked her to do it before finding you.”

She wasn’t expecting that. It was a sweet gesture, but how did he know she would even go along with it in the first place? Oh right. In the last few years they’d gotten to know each other almost as well as the backs of their own hands.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know. But I wanted to, and so did Iko.” He laughed. “Iko was actually a little too eager to do it. I think we might end up having pink table cloths at the reception.”

“Oh stars.”

He grinned, leaning forward to press a kiss to her forehead. “Now come on. I want to show you something.”

“You do?”

“Yup. It’s not much, but I think you’ll like it. Come on.” 

He led her through the palace and out to the gardens. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone high in the vibrant blue sky. A gentle breeze blew through the trees as they walked through rows of roses and azaleas and chrysanthemums. They walked over the bridge above the koi pond, nearing the back where the bench Kai and Cinder claimed as their own was nestled under a cherry blossom tree.

As they got closer, Cinder saw something new planted around the bench.

“Are those…?”

“Peonies.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Another crying induced headache made its way to the front of her head. She swallowed. Reaching out, she touched one of the pastel pink flowers with her flesh hand. It was soft and smelled wonderful.

“Do you like them?” Kai whispered. He sat on the stone bench, one hand on her shoulder as he patiently waited for a response.

Cinder sat next to him, wrapping her arms around his waist as she buried her face in his chest. “I love them. Thank you.”

“I’d do anything for you.” He held her close, rubbing her back slowly.

“What made you think of this?” she asked.

“I remembered you mentioning how sad you were that you didn’t have anything to remind you of her. Planting some peonies seemed like a good way to remember her.” He paused. “She would have wanted you to have something. I’m only sorry that I can’t do more.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be, it’s perfect.”

They were both silent for a few minutes, basking in each other’s embrace. Cinder felt her stress melting away the more time she spent with him, so she didn’t let go. This was exactly what she needed and she couldn’t have been more grateful to him.

“It’s not your fault, Cinder,” he whispered. “I know you still blame yourself for her death, but it’s not your fault.”

“Kai--”

“And it’s not your fault that Adri treated you so terribly either. You didn’t deserve that. You’re a wonderful person. So strong and brave and kind and smart. And I love you so much.”

Her fingers bunched up the silk material of his shirt, holding onto him as if her life depended on it. No one had ever told her that before. No one ever told her that it wasn’t her fault for all the things people did and said to her in the past.

For the first five years of her living memory she was told that she was worthless, that she wasn’t human because of things that were out of her control. Those words broke her down, shattered her heart into millions of little pieces.

Somehow Iko, Kai, and all their friends were putting the pieces back together these last couple years. Somehow she was becoming whole, becoming loved again. Hearing him say that was like he put in the last piece. Cinder was finally able to genuinely believe that nothing Adri, Pearl, or any ignorant person on the street once said to her was real or her fault.

She was blameless when it came to the actions of others against her.

“I love you, Kai."

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered, “I love  _ you _ .”


End file.
